Tag Archives: books

Grab the chance to get my book cheap, in time for Mos Craciun, with the lovely discounts at librarie.ro! The online bookshop is almost giving the book away – a lifelong present for the cost of a couple of coffees. How could you resist?

“You lend us your sharp eyes and understanding. You make us understand ourselves better, you make us better understand you. You give us importance by understanding us better than we sometimes do. Your book gives us hope in a world where we have lost heaven. ”

“A real painter in touch with the pure essence of things and beings. I found myself immersed into a dialogue with you, dear Arabella, about solitude, the energy that comes from living close to nature, the joy of being present to the sounds of the forest.”

“I simply love the way in which it is written, the fact that the words can make me actually SEE/FEEL your world, is just brilliant!”

“I’ve appreciated both your humour and your self-irony or the finger pointed at various strange characters you’ve come across … I got carried away…”

“The book is unlike anything I’ve read, full of emotion, in which the author puts her heart out for you, so it’s impossible not to be moved. And the language is so normal, alive, it’s like a friend whom you haven’t seen in a long time.”

“I had a ‘white’ night last night. I couldn’t take my hands off your book. It made me laugh, it made me cry or both at the same time. Regardless of what this country has been giving you, I am sure I speak on behalf of all of your Romanian friends when saying: “Thank you for what YOU give us.”

“Honest, deeply sensitive, beautifully expressed. What a fabulous book this is.”

“…the quality of your writing is top-notch and I adore the naturalness of your use of metaphor: ‘longing for dreamless oblivion cradled in the city’s roar’, ‘I’m a molecule on the skin of the earth’ and your precise punctuation, which gives your writing such a lovely flow.”

“Really, it’s wonderful – you’ve basically opened the door to a different way of seeing and understanding Romania.”

“…fascinating, and it reads just as you talk, flows so naturally. … Your chapter on Ginny was painful to read, powerful and compelling as the reader joins you every step of the way as you navigate the darkest of times.”

I’ve updated the books page on this site with two new entries on the non-fiction page and an interloping entry on the fiction page. If you’re coming to Transylvania, or have been here, and want to read more, here are some cracking books to buy or borrow. Here’s the non-fiction page to start with.

Happy New Year to you all! If you don’t already live here, I hope we’ll see you in Magura during 2013.

Blogger and Magura blog follower Susan has just finished Banffy’s Transylvanian trilogy, and posted an excellent review as a comment to the post before this. It deserves a post of its own, so as 2013’s first entry, here it is.

“While the books are frequently referred to as Bánffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy,” the book describes a Transylvania that was still part of Hungary, not Romania, in the decade before the outbreak of World War I. The main character (Abady), like Bánffy, is a Hungarian aristocrat, and much of the story takes place in Budapest. But regardless of the character’s – or author’s – nationality, there’s no doubting their love for Transylvania. Its forests and lands seem as dear to Abady as his lover, and Bánffy lovingly describes them in all four seasons. And even as a Hungarian, Bánffy – through Abady – argues for Transylvania’s unique needs, customs, and resources.

One disadvantage of the time frame of the novels is that the Transylvanian place names in the book are no longer in common usage, reflecting the older, Hungarian labels. Kolozsvár is clearly Cluj-Napoca, but I had problems with the other names. (Is Brasso Braşov?) I would love a future edition to include a map indicating both Hungarian and Romanian names. The Abady seat is near Kolozsvár, so I gather that most of the action takes place in northern Transylvania rather than the southern area that most western tourists associate with Transylvania.

As might be expected of a trilogy, the scope of the novels is huge. But, in composing his elegy for Hungarian Transylvania, Bánffy lays bare the jewels and faults of his society with the skill of a miniaturist. Duelling customs, ball protocols, forest management practices, are all described in detail, yet all feel an integral part of the story, never falsely introduced just to convey information. Perhaps Bánffy’s most astonishing feat in this regard are the long passages relating the Parliamentary dysfunction of the time, pages and pages of information that somehow never feel didactic. I devoured them, a history lesson wrapped up in an epic novel. (Bánffy even manages a brief reference to himself as actor rather than author.) In fact, the political side of the novels gripped me more than the central love story, but that says as much about my temperament as Bánffy’s storytelling.

I don’t want to relate too much for fear of giving something away (I tend to detest many recent reviews for that reason), but I would unreservedly recommend this book to anyone: those looking for a fuller understanding of Transylvania’s rich complexities or Eastern Europe’s dysfunction and misfortune leading up to World I, those looking for a heart-breaking story of human decency and blindness, or those simply looking for a rollicking good read.”

Miklos Banffy’s Transylvania Trilogy was written between 1934 and 1940, and has been hailed recently as a forgotten masterpiece. It has been reprinted by Arcadia Books in recent years, and sounds like a fabulous read.

Says Telegraph reviewer Charles Moore: “This growing acclaim is deserved. Banffy’s trilogy is just about as good as any fiction I have ever read…. Although they are very funny, they are deeply serious. They are like Anna Karenina and War and Peace rolled into one. Love, sex, town, country, money, power, beauty, and the pathos of a society which cannot prevent its own destruction – all are here.”

Banffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy

The Scotsman’s reviewer exulted: “[Th]is is a novel of great events and the private lives of a huge cast of characters told with gusto and amplitude…. If it is the Romantic elements that make the novel so enjoyable, so irresistible, it is the author’s keen political intelligence and refusal to indulge in self-deception which give it an unusual distinction. It’s a novel that, read at the gallop for sheer enjoyment, is likely to carry you along. But many will want to return to it for a second, slower reading, to savour its subtleties and relish the author’s intelligence.”

Jan Morris named They Were Found Wanting as one of her books of the year for 2000 and Caroline Moor wrote: “My great find of the year is a reprint of the magnificent trilogy, set in pre-war Transylvania by Miklos Banffy which stands comparison with the great Russian and French masters. Banffy vies with Tolstoy for sweep, Pasternak for romance and Turgenev for evocation of nature; his fiction is packed with irresistible social detail and crammed with superb characters: it is gloriously, addictively, compulsively readable.”

Limba româna

Life in the Carpathians

Magura is one of Romania's prettiest villages, 1,000 metres up in the mountains, in the Piatra Craiului National Park. Magura and neighbouring village Pestera are the only two villages in any Romanian national park. Life is sweet, the air is clean, and the welcome is warm.

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